Kite Flying

Kite Flying
Monday, 26th May, 2008
We made kites from paper, paint, skewers, string and fabric tails and bows.
It was fine but windy today so we went flying the kites. It was great fun.
Our kites fly best if we fly them against the wind.

Big Bug

Friday, 23rd May 2008

We found a huge bug in the yard. After looking up the identification key we have decided that it is some kind of beetle - we're not sure what kind exactly but it looks amazing!

Mayflies

May flies
Wednesday, 21st May, 2008
Ms. Ferguson brought us in a box of Mayflies from Lough Corrib. They don't live long. The mayflies with green wings are very healthy. The ones with black wings will die soon. We put the mayflies on the back of our hands. They were very tame. They sat there nice and happily.

Drama with Pete

Drama Classes
Wednesday, 21st May, 2008
This is Pete. He is our drama teacher. He came to our classroom to teach us drama.After doing some warm up rhymes we pretended to be rabbits. Here we are eating our food.
Then we played a game of fox and rabbit (like cat and mouse), had to protect ourselves from the fox, and played a clapping game.
Last week we did lots of wild animal games and activities.

Drumming lessons

Drumming Classes Tuesday, 20th May, 2008
This is Alan.
He gave us the first of 6 drumming lessons today. We did them in the community centre.
After our stretching and moving warm up we each sat at a drum. There were 3 types of drums.
We learned to drum and pretended we were elephants, dogs and mice. We used other percussion instruments and made loud and soft sounds like a storm in a forest. It was great fun.

Interactive Whiteboards

Our school has just got 5 new interactive whiteboards. They work a little like a projector for the computer, but are much much better. We write the news on ours, do our maths, play maths and science games, play all our music CDs and computer CDs, and we can make pages of lovely art. We love our new whiteboard.

Trees in full bloom

We have been watching these trees all year. We saw that they lost their leaves in autumn, that they had no leaves in winter. We watched their bud bursts in Spring and now in summer we can see these trees in full bloom. Can you tell which one is Horse Chestnut,
which one is Ash and which one is Hawthorn?

Ants in the garden

Ants
Friday, 16th May, 2008
Teacher found an ant nursery under a stone in her garden. The ants had lots of babies in white sacks. When the stone was lifted, the parent ants protected the babies by pushing the sacks of babies into the ant hole. It was an amazing sight.

Two new teachers

We have two new teachers in our classroom. Their names are Ms. Bayne and Ms. Cooney. They are very nice and are doing lots of interesting things with us. They have a friend Gerry who comes to school with them. Is maith le Gerry Gaeilge. Gerry loves Irish and has fun with us every time we do Irish.

Our Local Garda

Thursday, 15th May, 2008
We had a visit today from our local community garda. She was very nice. She talked to us all about keeping safe - crossing the road, wearing seat belts in the car, talking to strangers, what to do if we get lost. Now we know how to stay safe.

Charlie the puppy

We had a new guest in our class today. His name is Charlie. He is the brand new pet in the Byrnes' family. Isn't he so cute?

Art in May

We have made some lovely ladybirds. They are made of papier mache. We got some yoghurt pots, covered them with newspaper dipped in flour and water. When they dried we painted them in red, with a black head and black spots. They look great.
Here are some lovely "lion in the jungle" fabric paintings that we did with our new teachers.
We also did some nice butterfly resist paintings. This means that we drew butterflies in crayon and painted on top. The crayon came through the paint to make nice pictures.
We made kites from paper, paint, skewers, string and fabric tails and bows.
It was fine but windy today, May 26th, so we went flying the kites. It was great fun.
Our kites fly best if we fly them against the wind.
Friday, 30th May, 20008
We made some lovely finger painted butterflies. We also folded them over after finger painting half, so both sides of our butterflies look the same, just like real butterflies.

Bug Hunting

Bug Hunting, May 7th, 2008
One wall in the senior school has a lovely minibeast mural on it.
We find most of our bugs under logs by the wall.
We try not to disturb the minibeasts’ homes too much.
We tried to identify all the minibeasts using an identification key.
We found slugs, snails, worms, wood lice, centipedes, earwigs, spiders ants and milliipedes
We made a tally of all the minibeasts we found.

Sorting Bottle Tops

Sorting Bottle Tops
Wednesday, 7th May, 2008
Teacher has a collection of bottle tops. We sorted them according to colour, into a big set and a small set, into flip or twist lids, into different types of lids, and into thick and thin lids. It was really interesting.

Logic Attribute Block Dominoes

Logic Blocks
Tuesday, 29th April, 2008
We laid out the attribute logic blocks on the floor. We played a kind of Domino game with them.
We could change only one thing from the piece before…..either size, shape, colour or thickness.
This is what our finished domino looked like.

Ollie the guide dog

Ollie the Guide Dog
Friday, 2nd May, 2008

This is Ollie the guide dog. He came to our school to tell us all about being a guide dog (well, his owner did).
One of our class tried to walk with a blindfold on. It was very hard. The guide dog can help people who are blind.
Some of the children could get Ollie to sit down by saying “Ollie, sit”.